The world famed Professor Kevin Warwick, known as the world’s first “human cyborg”, shared his experience on Sunday 4 November at UNNC, where he described how it feels like to be part human, part technology. The lecture is also in conjunction with the IET Doctoral Forum on Biomedical Engineering, Healthcare, Robotics and Artificial INtelligence 2018 (BRAIN 2018).
With a full-house attendance of almost 250 staff and students, Professor Warwick charmed the audience with his impressive show on the process of devoting his own body for science. He also shared his research activities, including work on helping Parkinson’s disease patients and patients who lost their hearing abilities.
Cyborg is short for “cybernetic organism”. In other words, the cyborg is part organic being (e.g. human), part technology. In Hollywood, cyborgs are depicted in science fiction movies like Robocop, Star Trek (known as Borg), Terminator or Cyborg in Justice League.
Professor Warwick’s reputation as “self-experimenter” in cyborg research earns him the name of the “world’s first human cyborg”. Not only that, his wife Irena Warwick also volunteered to have electrodes implanted into her nervous system so that both can perform “nerve-to-nerve communication” with each other as far as New York.
The Faculty of Science and Engineering together with the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Beijing Office, co-hosted this lecture. The lecture also supported by the Graduate School of UNNC.
Both Kevin and Irena Warwick demonstrate an incredible act of bravery in the name of science by implanting a foreign object, now known as the BrainGate, into their nervous system. They are willing to risk amputation or even brain damage if things go wrong.
A full video recorded for the lecture and interview of Professor Warwick on Cyborg will soon be available at the Faculty of Science and Engineering website.
Visit www.kevinwarwick.com for more on Professor Warwick research on cyborg.
Published on 06 November 2018